Nurturing Georgia's Families Project® (NGF)
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NGF works to prevent the cited problem of child abuse, neglect, and substance abuse via in-home visitation and group-based programming. 
Since its establishment in 1997, NGF has expanded across 74 counties and is currently the highest funded prevention contractor for the State of Georgia. The project is funded by the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD).
NGF includes three strategies for prevention, including community-based workshops, training, and program delivery.
Community-based Workshops:
Workshops can be held in a variety of settings, and are offered for FREE in 74 counties.
The goal of the community-based workshops are to educate a community on protective parenting practices that can lead to strong, nurturing relationships that can help prevent substance abuse and violence. The workshops can be tailored and targeted toward community members but are considered primary prevention and provide useful information for anyone attending. A secondary, strategic goal of the workshops is to expose parents with a stigma-free approach to parenting education where the next step would be a full parenting program. HEARTS plans to begin targeting programs in communities where workshops are being held so those who desire additional support can participate in a full parenting program.
See a full list of available workshops.
The workshop “12 Steps to Keeping Your Kids Drug Free” has recently been evaluated by Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health. Significant increases were achieved from pre to post in participants' beliefs in their ability to talk to their children about drugs.
Trainings:
Trainings are a way to build the capacity of community partners to offer the Nurturing Parenting Programs with program fidelity. The complete training model is competency-based and incorporates training for referral agencies, supervisors, and agency staff. The training prepares agencies for successful program implementation. The last step before program implementation is program planning within the targeted community.
All training participants are assessed through quantitative and qualitative measures. If a training participant needs additional support or additional training (as identified through the evaluation process) it is arranged and offered. HEARTS partners with quality facilitators that score 80% or higher on assessments with an average of a 6.0 or higher on the five parenting constructs measured by the Adult Adolescent Parenting Inventory.
In the past 13 years, HEARTS has successfully met its goal to offer quality trainings with satisfied training participants.
Programs:
HEARTS offers the Nurturing Parenting Programs to local communities.
See a list of available programs.
The Nurturing Georgia’s Families Project follows SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s Strategic Prevention Framework by:
- Assessing community needs for substance abuse prevention
- Building the Capacity of the community to deliver evidence based programs with fidelity
- Planning: Creating an individualized agency plan to target and deliver services within the agency’s community by the agency
- Implementation: Provide technical assistance and oversight for agencies partnering with us to deliver the Nurturing Parenting Program. FNC-GA’s focus is on program fidelity, agency’s cultural competence, quality assurance, and methods for participant retention.
Evaluation: FNC-GA collects all program data and conducts individual program and overall project evaluation.
The NGF project has successfully met its program goals to change the harmful attitudes and beliefs of parents and children toward substance use, neglect, and violence while increasing participant’s knowledge and skill in family management and resolving conflict. HEARTS focuses on the following risk/protective factors:
Decision Making/Problem Solving
Empowerment
Family Cohesion
Family Conflict
Life Skills
Parenting Practices
Attitude toward use
Rebellious (Impulsiveness)
Self-Esteem
Family Stress
Parent/Child Bonding